


Loving a Beast

by magelette



Category: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5389133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magelette/pseuds/magelette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her Beast is transformed into a human and happily ever after has begun, and yet, Belle wonders what would have happened if Adam had stayed as her Beast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loving a Beast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boywonder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boywonder/gifts).



Before we moved to the country, Papa would take me with him when he visited the grand libraries in Paris in search of inspiration for a new invention. The other scholars looked down their long, dusty noses at me, a small, insignificant girl-child who dared invade their academic sanctuaries. Even after I proved I could read French, Latin, and even English, even after I answered every insidious question they asked on the politics of the French court and church fathers, even after I’d proven that I was more than my father’s ‘little parrot,’ as they called me, they still wouldn’t accept me. Our village thought they were the first people to exclude me and shun me, the first people to judge me and turn me away because I was different. 

I remember these mocking faces, their pallor and ugliness. I remember the high-pitched laughter, the derisive sound of their voices. After one insinuated that I was little more than a sexual receptacle with legs, Papa decided to leave for country life. He swore it was for his own health, which had tended toward consumption the more time that he spent in his laboratory and at the university. He also swore to Mama, as she died bringing me into this world, that he would protect me with his last breath.

I am ashamed to admit that you frightened me at first. For all your abundance of fur and your loud rage, you reminded me of the same predators that swarmed the university. You judged me outright, treating me as a hostage and a replacement for my father. You acted in haste and in anger – I understand that now. But you also assumed that I would turn the same judgmental eye that others must have turned on you. Yes, I was scared of you, but who wouldn’t be scared by a raging, roaring monster who strikes out with intent to attack?

But then. But then. Your social graces were on par with Gaston’s, in some cases, but you didn’t pursue me relentlessly. I know Lumiere and the others coached you. I know they tried to train you in gentility to the best of your – and their – ability. I know what effort you put into bringing the library back to life again, all because you noticed, you paid attention, and you realized how much access to learning meant to me.

Those days were awkward at first. You tried to hard not to rip the books. You tried so hard to remember the skills you must have learned at some point. You went above and beyond to prove you were more than a savage beast. And I was able to see the gentleness inside you. The humility. The eagerness to relearn, not just to please me, but for your own sake. You admired me, not because of a twist of fate that made me pleasing to look at, but because of what was under the hair and skin and skull. You admired me, and my humanity. And because of this, I was able to see your humanity. I gradually was able to welcome your light, hesitant touch, and not fear the tender look in your eyes. You weren’t savage. You were wild, yes, and you could still ravish me if you chose on superior strength alone, but you didn’t. You valued me. And you judged me worthy.

You noticed the scars on my wrists one day. They’re faint now, mere lines that most can’t even see. Maybe it was your superior eyesight. Maybe it was your superior ability to see clearly, and to see through me. When I told you what happened: that man, his attempt, how Papa flew into rage and pulled that man off me, how that man blamed the child that I was for tempting him, how I tried to take my own life because I didn’t think even Papa could love me anymore. I told you all Papa had done to try and save me, including moving us to the country, away to his access to such grand information. And you looked at those scars, and then at me, and then you kissed each pale, spidery line. I didn’t know that I loved you then, because I still remembered that you kept me captive, that you denied me access to Papa. But I think, at that moment, my heart recognized the gentleness in you and how I had wronged you.

Maybe I should’ve stayed. Maybe I should have said I would return to you, Papa in tow. I know that I waited too long, and as a result, Gaston blundered into our affairs and nearly ruined it all. I came back in time, and I recognized what everyone else saw in time to fulfill the curse’s requirements, but I still wonder. I look at you, Adam, with your long, lush hair, your Roman nose, your blue eyes, and see the similarities to the men who hunted me in that library. The refinement and the aristocracy overrules the gentleness and the wildness of my Beast. Instead of delicacy, your naked fingers move with deliberation. Instead of worship and adoration, your eyes look down on me in something that looks like achievement and even pity. You’re not the King of France and the curse erased local memory of its own noble son, but there’s an attitude that you’ve put on with your male self, as if society’s expectations are riding you and clothing you. You aren’t my Beast.

I try. I try so hard to submit, to let those naked, pale fingers grope at me instead of the gentle touch of large, velvet paws and sheathed claws. I don’t flinch at the feel of skin on skin, missing the warmth of your fur instead of the clamminess of your chest pressed against mine. But I think you know what thoughts run through my mind. And I hate that I hurt us both this way.

Who could ever learn to love a beast? I could. I did. When you kissed my wrists, your muzzle so gentle for all its teeth, I think we both knew we’d crossed some sort of boundary. You pulled away first, dropping my arm like it was a hot coal, but I did nothing to grab your paws and pull you back to me. I should have, I realize now. I should have dragged you back to me and pressed our bodies together, if only so that I could have something more than one kiss, one imprint of your real body on mine. I think, in time, I’ll learn to have more affection for you and to welcome you into my heart. But for now, I tolerate your touch and your presence and I miss. I miss what I never had, because I wasn’t brave enough to ask or even to take. I miss the opportunity to know and possess a lover I didn’t realize I wanted. I miss two broken, misunderstood creatures reaching out to each other and finding each other. 

One of the stories I read to myself, when I was small, spoke of an ugly woman who coerced a brave knight into marrying her so that he could fulfill a quest. She had the answer to his question of what women wanted. I have my autonomy, my ability to fulfill my own destiny. But if that fairy woman came to me today and asked me what I wanted, I would tell her to turn back time and allow me to rectify my mistake. I would find my Beast again and I would love him physically, basking in his gentleness and in his strength, and I would let his broken heart heal mine, just as I let mine heal his.


End file.
